It’s great to be back at CCS, where people love comics, beer, pot, soccer, and Mario Kart. What can I say, I’m flying around in a fuckin fantasyland! Although, that ol’ demon money keeps tugging at me like some sort of devilish ballast and crashing me back to reality! The less you have, the more it ways you down. Oakley Hall’s Landlord is my anthem. It’s about how Pat “Papa Crazy” Sullivan’s great-great-grandfather murdered his landlord, and then bucked the system by sewing an iron collar into his shirt so he wouldn’t die when he was hanged. And how that same Irish anger is flowing in Crazy’s veins today and he wonders if his landlord really wants the rent so bad? Love it so much.

And speaking of songs I love so much, I think its hilarious to think about any of the Jim Steinman Meatloaf lyrics literally. Such fraught, overwrought metaphors! Like this one.

Now I’m back in New England, but not the mountains of Vermont yet, folks, for now I’m in the swamps of Connecticut. I’m in Mom and Dad’s living room, and he’s workin the P90X while I write. This morning Caitlin did the woman in the gray suit commuting thang on Metro-North down to The City. She and I watched Schmavatar on Christmas, and I’ll admit it was interesting, especially that crazy bio-luminescent flora and fauna, and the only times I felt overly aware of the fact I was looking at CG were the times when real people were in fake helicopters. There was some really dumb dialogue, beat-you-over-the-head parallels to the Iraq war, colonialism and the environmental movement. But still, it’s nice that somebody is addressing (and entertaining) a mass audience with these liberal polemics. And there were some really exciting action sequences, and a cool alien concept that I won’t divulge lest I be called a spoiler. I forgot to mention this galling fact: the Na’vi subtitles were written in…PAPYRUS!When I get back to my home/office computer up north, I think I’ll post the full Captain Walton, since its plot so closely parallels the Av’s, right down to hot, blue alien babes and mining for rare crystals.

Oh, here’s another diary doodad I forgot to show ya! A bit cutesy, yes, but that’s what sells, kid.

As it turns out, the bus ride I described to you last week was in some ways better than the two others that followed – at least it didn’t involve standing outside Penn Station in a mosh pit of Marylanders for three hours. Fingers crossed on that continental high-speed rail network Barrack put some money aside for! Yeah, right.

Speaking of buses…

Things have been lovely lately. I had a visit from a whole bunch of family, plus love-of-my-life Caitlin this weekend, and we saw a bonfire, a frat house, and some fun things around WRJ, VT. It was refreshing to see the town through their eyes, and it made me feel less like I was born to run from it. Last night I even caught up on some emails I’d been neglecting. I’m feeling rejuvenated!

This time I put a comic excerpt on my normal website; check it oooot. Oh no, you don’t want to go to my website? Fine. Here it is:

Dear Blogfriends,

Those of you with Blogger accounts using the newer commenting system, I’m trying to write on your posts, really I am! For some reason, nothing happens when I post selecting a Google ID or a Wordpress.com ID. I noticed at least one of you (I think Jen/Devon) also had an option to just put in my name, email, website manually, and that worked. The rest of youse, I really want to give you feedback and toss up some comedic gems, but it just ain’t happening for some godawful reason.

Speaking of gods being awful:

Here’es another Segar-esque strip, drawn in class. Hour anna half? Hour forty-five? It was quicker, and in some ways I think that made it truer to the source material. Def the hardest part of being a waiter is remembering all the different people’s different needs.

…this is what my life has been like so far. For the first publications class project here at CCS, we made a facebook, in the old-fashioned sense where you see the names and faces of all the freshmen. Each person’s biography was xeroxed on the back of the previous person’s screen printed portrait. They were bound last Monday.

Here’s this comic. The faces are inconsistent and I’m sorry. But, you might recognize the actors. And maybe that’s part of the problem?

H’lo folks. Sorry I’ve been such a bad blogger. Here’s some cartoons with which I’ve been learning how to use a dip pen, and especially the mythical G nib. Forged by samurai metallurgists obsessed with manga, the G nib is the only pen designed specifically with cartooning in mind. I’m not sure that it can lure me away from my Rapidographs, though.

First, a one-panel gag. I made two others, but one is pretty dumb and the other has been deemed by some to be too much for the internet to handle.

Next, a dear diary dream comic. (Trying to work looser, more cartoony, faster, but not exactly getting great results yet.)

And finally some autobio-ish strips in the style of EC Segar (you can click em to see em).

I’ve got more stuff to show you, and I promise to throughout the week.